This invention relates to a method of making a novel, intermittently dyed yarn, to the yarn thus produced, and to fabrics made therefrom, and has particular reference to the production of tufted pile carpets composed of drawn synthetic continuous filament yarn, which carpet can be conveniently mass produced and stored in a partially dyed condition, and which can be subjected to subsequent batch over-dyeing in a manner to provide a finished carpet of any desired color choice.
In the production of carpets composed of the well known "spacedyed" yarns, such as yarns produced in accordance with my issued U.S. Pat. No. 3,012,303, granted Dec. 12, 1961 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,102,322, granted Sept. 3, 1963, it has been conventional to form the drawn and crimped continuous filament yarn into a prefabric such as knitted tubing, for example, and to pad dye the tubing with an overall basic color. This was followed by "spacedyeing" in which selected areas of the tubing were printed with different colors, following which the prefabric was dyed and the dye heat-set. The prefabric was then deknitted and wound onto cones or beams. Subsequently, the yarn was subjected to a carpet tufting operation in order to produce a multicolored tufted carpet. Such a multicolored tufted carpet was completely dyed, and the basic pad dyed color was clearly visible in the tufts of the fabric, along with the additional colors that had been added to the knitted prefabric by the "spacedyeing" procedure.
In accordance with conventional procedures, it has been considered necessary to produce the resulting carpets in a wide variety of colors, such as twelve to eighteen, for example. Thus in the warehousing of such carpets prior to sale to the ultimate customers, it has been necessary to maintain a very large inventory, such inventory containing a representative quantity of carpet of each such preselected color combination, so that each particular color combination would be available when selected or ordered by the customer. This, of course, greatly increased the ultimate cost of the carpet, because of the substantial expense of warehousing space, and because of other warehousing and inventory costs.
It is accordingly an object of this invention to provide a method, a yarn and a carpet which is drastically reduce the cost of warehousing and inventorying large numbers of different colors and different color combinations of carpets, without sacrificing the ability to provide such a wide variety of colors and color combinations to the customer upon reasonable notice.
It is still another object of this invention to provide a carpet making method, a carpet yarn and a carpet product which can be inventoried in only one color combination, and from which a wide variety of different color combinations may be made in a reasonable period of time, and at a reasonable cost.